Can DWR regain community trust? And other unresolved questions

Oroville >> Sunday marked one year since water spilled down the Oroville Dam emergency spillway for the first time in history, spelling near-disaster for nearly 188,000 residents downstream.

As erosion on that unlined hillside intensified on Feb. 12, water headed upward toward the concrete weir and there was fear that uncontrollable releases from the reservoir behind it would come crashing down on the cities below. Residents were given just one hour to evacuate that afternoon.

One year later, distrust in the state Department of Water Resources remains prevalent in the community. Some hope the department improves on the transparency front and takes critics more seriously. For others, the damage seems irreversible.

On the first anniversary of the crisis, questions remain open about the state of recreation, how the spillways will be different another year from now, and lawsuits filed by locals against the state.

Can residents’ broken trust be rebuilt?

Brandon Gage, owner of Gage Brothers Ranch in Butte County, says he is not sure. Gage, 41, said his family has lived in the area since the Gold Rush.

Before the crisis, he only saw the Oroville Dam as an attribute for the community. Gage grew up in Chico and frequented Lake Oroville in the summer. Following the spillway failure last February, however, his view of the dam changed.

“After that, of course, you see it as a real threat in some ways,” Gage said. “I don’t trust DWR at all.”

“I don’t trust anyone in charge during the event because they minimized the breach,” Gage said. “It was a major problem that could have been catastrophic.”

While not sure if he will ever place faith in the department again, Gage said it would help to have a completely independent audit of the facilities.

A.J. Haggard, a partner at California Occupational Medical Professionals in Oroville, also said his amount of trust in the department currently amounts to “zero.” Haggard, 67, grew up in Richvale, while the dam was being built. Construction was completed in 1968.

“I thought the dam was a great thing,” he said. “Boating, fishing … that sort of became the identity of the city.”

His business was closed for about 12 days, posing issues for patients who needed help with things like getting medications, Haggard said.

“That was tough, trying to figure out where people were,” he said. “And if people were really hurting, we were trying to get them to an emergency room or something like that to get their medications refilled.”

Haggard said the business continued to pay employees during that period and lost an estimated $25,000.

“It was an amazingly stupid mistake for (DWR) to make to not maintain (the dam properly),” he said. “It was very unfortunate that they were not forthcoming with the situation. When water got close to the top, they could have asked any 5-year-old that grew up around here, ‘what happens when you put water over dirt?’”

To make amends, DWR should be more transparent and truly put public safety first, Haggard said.

Joe Mata, an Oroville resident who works at the Pacific Coast Producers cannery, said he has always been leery of the department. His father worked as an accountant for the county, so Mata grew up hearing about broken promises.

“I haven’t trusted them since day one,” he said.

On Feb. 12, he noticed an abnormal amount of traffic on Oro Quincy Highway near his home and turned on the radio to find out about the mandatory evacuation. He rushed his two children into the car and headed to Chico, where they would spend the night in their truck in the Walmart parking lot.

Already a stressful situation on its own, it was compacted by the fact that Mata had trouble comforting his 12-year-old son who has autism.

“He just lost it because he has a certain routine he is used to,” he said. “I had to keep him from bashing his head against the wall.”

The experience afflicted Jane Hume, 74, and her family to the point that she decided to move to Chico afterward, despite continuing to work in Oroville at Sierra Pacific Industries.

She got emotional recounting last year’s events.

She was at home reading when her daughter called and told her “you need to get out now, don’t take anything, just hop in the car and go.”

Hume, who lived in Oroville for 18 years, said regardless of what changes the department makes, she will not consider moving back.

Louise Feldt, who is 79 and retired, acknowledged that she had a certain level of confidence in DWR, as she continued to live in Oroville. Feldt moved to the city from Red Bluff three years ago and lives in a low-income senior housing apartment complex.

Feldt said she hoped for little rain this year as her faith is limited. One way to regain her trust would be for the department to take seriously the UC Berkeley group which has issued several reports critical of DWR’s management and maintenance, she said.

“I don’t consider that a good sign, that they don’t believe people from (UC Berkeley),” Feldt said. “It sounds like there was carelessness for years. They ignored what they were supposed to do. It could have flooded the whole area.”

What’s recreational access look like?

Kevin Zeitler, chair of the Oroville Recreational Advisory Committee, said the further out, the better. For now, he says, it’s not great.

“It’s kind of like getting punched in the eye a second time,” Zeitler said.

The committee has been told to expect that the spillway boat launch ramp, the largest ramp on the lake, will likely not reopen until late 2019. In the meantime, the state Department of Water Resources has pushed forward projects the committee has advocated for, as long as 10 or 15 years, Zeitler said.

“The good news, in some cases, is the department realized they had to make things better so they’re expanding facilities,” he said. “The department is trying to make things right, if you will. It’s just a long way to go.”

“Our major concern we probably have is the spillway (ramp),” Zeitler said. “It’s such a big project.”

While understanding that access has to be limited to some extent during construction, he hopes that there is a change in what seems to be the “default” to extensive closures.

“Only things that absolutely have to be closed, close those,” Zeitler said. “Anything else, try to work around and open as much as possible.”

If people come to visit Lake Oroville and can’t get in, they won’t come back, he said. With the lake low and use of it limited, tourism suffers.

“Time is money. You don’t get any time back when you waste it,” Zeitler said. “It means recreation and the economy is depressed. That’s one of the last things we need in one of the poorest counties in California. Where’s the justice for that? We need everything to be A class.”

Lake Oroville: What’s open, what’s closed?

Aaron Wright, California State Parks superintendent, said the following areas are accessible: all trails east and south of the visitors center, the west portion of the Lakeland Boulevard trail, and trails around the North Thermalito Forebay and South Thermalito Forebay. He added that State Parks does not manage the Thermalito Afterbay, where several miles of trails are open.

• For biking: 37.27 miles normally open, 9.79 miles currently open (26 percent)

• For horse riding: 36.62 miles normally open, 11.90 miles currently open (32 percent)

• For hiking: 65.07 miles normally open, 26.69 miles currently open (41 percent)

What’s next phase of spillway construction?

The department met its Nov. 1 deadline to repair the broken spillway to withstand 100,000 cubic-feet per second flows, and the next phase could be even more challenging, said Jeff Petersen of Kiewit Infrastructure West Co. Kiewit’s contract goes until January 2019.

Petersen said on Jan. 26 that 200 employees were working on the site, a considerable downsize since the height of reconstruction. In September, about 600 crew members were out on the spillway, many of whom were working seven days a week or double shifts.

It remains to be seen who will pay for it all. Congressmen Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale) and John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove) announced last week that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was voicing uncertainty about whether it would be able to cover the cost of repairs, as FEMA is not meant to cover expenses resulting from a lack of repairs, and will only provide reimbursement for facilities to be brought back to their “pre-disaster design.”

The department has been hoping FEMA would pay for 75 percent of the price tag with the State Water Contractors on the hook for the remainder of the bill.

The agency has issued the department $86.9 million for emergency response, said Erin Mellon, DWR assistant director of public affairs, on Friday. She said DWR had so far submitted $115.9 million to FEMA, amounting to 75 percent.

Phase two should start in May, weather permitting. Major work to be completed this year includes:

• A concrete splash pad made of roller-compacted concrete, or RCC, will be installed below the emergency spillway weir.

• An underground secant pile wall, also referred to as a cutoff wall, should be complete in March. Concrete is being drilled 35-65 feet underground into bedrock. The underground wall combined with the splash pad are measures to prevent massive erosion and headcutting like what occurred last February, leading to fear that water would overtop the weir.

• The uppermost 730 feet of the spillway will be entirely reconstructed.

• Reinforced structural concrete will be laid on the middle chute and its walls, which were filled with RCC in 2017.

• At the bottom of the spillway, energy dissipaters, also known as dentates, will be hydro-blasted and resurfaced.

Will power plants be at full operation?

DWR aims to have two of four units at the Ronald B. Robie Thermalito Powerplant up and running by the end of 2018, Mellon said. That power plant at the outfall of the Thermalito Forebay has not been functional since a fire broke out there on Thanksgiving Day in 2012.

The department announced in November plans to have all turbines in the Hyatt Powerplant operational in 2018 for the first time in years. Mellon said on Friday that the department aimed to have the plant’s sixth turbine operational by mid-2018 but a recent test of the refurbished turbine’s shutoff valve showed a need for further repairs, which the department intends to have done by the end of the year.

DWR also has an outage planned for one of its two penstocks, which involves three turbines, but that will be timed to ensure the department can safely manage lake levels during the outage, she said.

Other than the District Attorney’s suit, all are represented by law firms Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, LLP out of Burlingame and Woodland-based Gardner, Janes, Nakken, Hugo & Nolan. While damages in the three complaints are different, they contain the same allegations of corruption within the department.

The city seeks reparations for road repairs but the suit also contains accounts that are not directly related to the crisis.

County Counsel Bruce Alpert said that was sending a message.

“That complaint was a sea change,” Alpert said. “People are seeing what’s in our backyard for what it is.”

For a long time, the county and city have not seen eye-to-eye on what their relationship to DWR should be, a main point of contention being that the county did not sign onto the $61 million settlement agreement, while the city did. With negotiations finalized over 10 years ago, a new license for the department to operate the dam has yet to be issued. Meanwhile, DWR has continued to operate under the conditions of the old license. The Oroville City Council approved another one-year extension in June by a 5-2 vote, with councilors Jack Berry and Marlene Del Rosario against.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, could grant the license for a term of up to 50 years.

Many license agreement signatories, including local environmental groups and cities downstream, have formally requested that FERC delay issuing the license at least until all parties have time to review and process the findings in the independent forensic report, which was released on Jan. 5. The report blamed “long-term systematic failure” for the crisis.

Bill Connelly, chair of the Butte County Board of Supervisors, said he thinks the signatories should not just delay, but ask for a reopener because of how much has changed in the last 10 years. It is unclear if there is a legal way to get out of the agreement.

Is his view, the city has taken a “180” with its recent lawsuit, but he still feels the community does not fully appreciate what benefits the city could have because of the dam’s location, like lower cost electricity, for example.

“You would think the world would wake up and listen to us a little bit,” Connelly said.

Butte County has four pending lawsuits against DWR unrelated to the Oroville Dam crisis. Since its claim was recently rejected, supervisors may soon vote in closed session to pursue a lawsuit of their own.